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Wednesday, December 21, 2016

First Dinosaur Tail Found Preserved in Amber

What has become fairly clear is that the transition from aquatic dinosaurs to land based dinosaurs demanded true insulation and we got this in the form of feathers. Flying was a much later development.

The larger creatures had the body mass to do without as we observe in Africa today. However all smaller creatures demand protection. Thus we have the advent of fathers however evolved. It had to have happened just in order for the family of dinosaurs to arise which makes it almost a first step.

I do suspect that the tyrannosaurus Rex is a land modified Crocodile that likely went naked and likely remained near water in order to avoid excessive heat...

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First Dinosaur Tail Found Preserved in Amber

To scientists' delight, the incredible appendage from 99 million years ago is covered in feathers.

A segment from the feathered tail of a dinosaur that lived 99 million years ago is preserved in amber. A Cretaceous-era ant and plant debris were also trapped in the resin.

The tail of a 99-million-year-old dinosaur, including bones, soft tissue, and even feathers, has been found preserved in amber, according to a report published today in the journal Current Biology.

While individual dinosaur-era feathers have been found in amber, and evidence for feathered dinosaurs is captured in fossil impressions, this is the first time that scientists are able to clearly associate well-preserved feathers with a dinosaur, and in turn gain a better understanding of the evolution and structure of dinosaur feathers.

Inside the lump of resin is a 1.4-inch appendage covered in delicate feathers, described as chestnut brown with a pale or white underside.

A micro-CT scan reveals the delicate feathers that cover the dinosaur tail.

CT scans and microscopic analysis of the sample revealed eight vertebrae from the middle or end of a long, thin tail that may have been originally made up of more than 25 vertebrae.

A scan of the underside of the tail shows the feather arrangement.

Photograph by Lida Xing

Based on the structure of the tail, researchers believe it belongs to a juvenile coelurosaur, part of a group of theropod dinosaurs that includes everything from tyrannosaurs to modern birds.

Feathered, but Could It Fly?

The presence of articulated tail vertebrae in the sample enabled researchers to rule out the possibility that the feathers belonged to a prehistoric bird. Modern birds and their closest Cretaceous ancestors feature a set of fused tail vertebrae called a pygostyle that enables tail feathers to move as a single unit.

"[A pygostyle] is the sort of thing you've seen if you've ever prepared a turkey," says study co-author Ryan McKellar, curator of invertebrate paleontology at Canada's Royal Saskatchewan Museum.

The dinosaur feather structure is open, flexible, and similar to modern ornamental feathers.

Photograph by Royal Saskatchewan Museum

The dinosaur feathers feature a poorly defined central shaft (rachis) and appear to keel to either side of the tail. The open, flexible structure of the feathers is more similar to modern ornamental feathers than to flight feathers, which have well-defined central shafts, branches, sub-branches, and hooks that latch the structure together.

In a report in June of this year by the same research team, Cretaceous-era bird wings preserved in amber revealed feathers remarkably similar to the flight feathers of modern birds.

The current study concludes that if the entire length of the dinosaur tail was covered in the type of feathers seen in the sample, the dinosaur "would likely have been incapable of flight." Rather, such feathers may have served a signaling function or played a role in temperature regulation, says McKellar. (Could dinosaurs fly?)

The amber sample—formally called DIP-V-15103 and nicknamed "Eva" in honor of paleobotanist Eva Koppelhus, the wife of co-author Philip Currie—comes from a mine in the Hukawng Valley in Kachin state, northern Myanmar. Amber from this region most likely contains the world's largest variety of animal and plant life from the Cretaceous period.

It was one of more than a dozen amber samples with significant inclusions that were collected by Xing and his research team in 2015 at a well-known amber market in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin state. Two of the other samples contained the dinosaur-era bird wings published earlier this summer.

The majority of Burmese amber is used in jewelry and carvings, and the "Eva" sample had already been subject to shaping by the time it was collected by the researchers.

The amber sample, from a mine in Myanmar, had already been partially shaped into an oval by a jewelry maker.

The modification had a silver lining, however: It offered "a nice cross section" through the tail that enabled the scientists to study the chemistry of the exposed surface, notes McKellar.

That study revealed the presence of ferrous iron, a decomposition product from the blood hemoglobin that was once present in the dinosaur's soft tissue.

"The fact that [the iron] is still present gives us a lot of hope for future analysis, to obtain other chemical information on things like pigmentation or even to identify parts of the original keratin," says McKellar. "Maybe not for this particular specimen, but for other [samples] down the road."

Meanwhile, Xing believes that the "nearing end" of a decades-old conflict between the Myanmar government and the Kachin Independence Army, which controls the Hukawng Valley, will lead to increased scientific access to the amber mines and, in, turn, to an increase in spectacular discoveries.

"Maybe we can find a complete dinosaur," he speculates, rather confidently.

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Apr 2017 - 4.1 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO rigorously described as the SPACE TIME PENDULUM, September 2010 I am pleased to report that my essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS' has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) and appeared in their June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in relativity,as well as differential geometry(pure math) and of course analysis. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled Paradigms Shift&. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data and record impressions and interpretations on material read. Do join my blog and receive Four items of interest daily Monday through Saturday.